News / Article

In the “Empire Strike Back,” Yoda admonishes Luke Skywalker for spending his life dreaming of the future, “never his mind on where he was … what he was doing.” But at 68, George Lucas, the creator of the “Star Wars” saga, seems to be doing much thinking about the years ahead — in fact, experts say, his decision to sell his company to Disney DIS +0.37% was an estate-planning move worthy of a Jedi Master.

Disney will buy LucasFilm for $4.05 billion in cash and stock, the two companies announced Tuesday. By cashing out now, experts say the filmmaker has spared his family the need to pick up the pieces of his empire after he’s gone. It also allows him to focus his remaining years on his charitable endeavors — particularly Edutopia and the George Lucas Educational Foundation, which he founded in 1991. “I am dedicating the majority of my wealth to improving education,” Lucas wrote in 2010 (pdf) on GivingPledge.com , which invites the world’s wealthiest people to commit most of their money to philanthropy.

Since none of Lucas’s three adopted children plans to take over his film empire, financial advisers say the strategy will save his heirs the responsibility of managing their inheritance — and potentially going through the often long and fraught process of dividing it. “Mr. Lucas has obviously surrounded himself for years with world-class legal, estate and tax advisers,” Wade Westhoff, a financial adviser based in Danville, Calif., says of the Disney deal. “This is a textbook example of exit planning for a private business owner.” (Lucas and a spokesman for LucasFilm were not immediately available for comment.)